Bilateral donors' interest vs. recipients' development motives in aid allocation : do all donors behave the same ?

Abstract

In this paper, I provide an overall empirical assessment of the motivations of official development assistance granted by rich countries to developing countries, as they are revealed by their aid allocation behaviours. Such behaviours result from a combination of self-interest purposes and of more altruistic development objectives. To perform this analysis, I use a three-dimensional panel dataset, combining the donor, recipient and time dimensions. Such data show a lot of heterogeneity in donor behaviours. Thanks to the width of this dataset, I can properly test differences of parameters among donors. In particular, these tests provide a way to compare the degree of altruism of the different donors.International aid allocation, altruism.